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In the last part of the Make Money from Your Blog series, I covered the ins and outs of PayPerPost. Today’s contribution to the series covers the relatively recent paid review program ReviewMe.

What is ReviewMe?

ReviewMe, like PayPerPost, offers the opportunity to earn money through sponsored blog posts. Originally, ReviewMe simply offered publishers the opportunity to register their websites whereby advertisers could locate suitable bloggers to write sponsored content. ReviewMe has since expanded to include a marketplace similar to PayPerPost’s core competency such that advertisers can post opportunities for bloggers to accept on a first-come, first-served basis.

What are the benefits of using ReviewMe?

ReviewMe offers advertisers the chance to find publishers that was previously unavailable. Although new competition has entered the field, ReviewMe remains strong because it was the first to offer advertisers the chance to find publishers for sponsored reviews with ease.

Because many bloggers — particularly newer bloggers — may have difficulty gauging the price to request for completing reviews, ReviewMe assists by providing a default asking price based upon statistical data including Alexa rank, Technorati rank, and estimated number of RSS subscribers. The requesting price can be modified within a range near to the default asking price assigned by ReviewMe.

Are there any drawbacks from using ReviewMe?

The biggest drawback to using ReviewMe is that they take a large percentages of earnings — 50% to be exact. If a publisher is offering reviews for $100, ReviewMe immediately pockets $50 as a cost of utilizing their service.

Additionally, a publisher whose blog does not have at least medium-strength statistics (Technorati, Alexa, etc.) will find that there is little to no demand from advertisers to complete a review for their product or service. This leaves the publisher to the marketplace until their blog’s stats improve.

Publishers who are planning to accept advertising opportunities within the marketplace will often find that the marketplace is empty. Advertising opportunities are often fully allocated shortly after being posted within ReviewMe’s marketplace, making it difficult for publishers using this approach.

So how do I get started?

Signing up for ReviewMe is a simple process. The first step is to create a new account by providing personal information such as name, address, SSN (if a US citizen), login credentials, and a PayPal email address. After registration is complete, you’ll need to login and provide your blog’s details so that advertisers can find you through ReviewMe. Details include blog name, URL, feed URL, description, category, and tags.

The next step is to make sure advertisers who visit your site are aware that you are offering paid reviews via ReviewMe. Navigate to the “Affiliate” tab, then click the “Affiliates” link. Clicking on the “Get HTML” button will provide the badge — a link and image, as seen on the right — that can be inserted into your blog for advertisers who come across your blog without the aide of ReviewMe. This badge will direct potential advertisers to a page where they can hire you to post a sponsored review.

For publishers who are interested in finding advertising opportunities through the marketplace, it’s as simple as clicking on the “View Campaigns” link under the “Publisher” tab. If any campaigns are available, information for each opportunity will be displayed such as its name, description, relevant categories, and payout. It’s important to note that ReviewMe has already accounted for their 50% fee from the marketplace listings, meaning that the dollar figure listed here is what a publisher will actually receive upon completing an accepted review.

To accept one of the marketplace reviews, simply click the “View” link to display the details regarding the opportunity, then click the accept button. ReviewMe will provide a due date by which the review must be completed. It is very important that upon completing a review, the publisher must return to ReviewMe to submit the URL of the review in order to receive credit and payment when the review is accepted.

How do I track my earnings?

ReviewMe makes fairly simple to view earnings for completed reviews as well as past payments received. Withing the “Publisher” tab, the “Manage My Reviews” link will provide a table of all reviews regardless of their status. Calculating unpaid earnings must be done manually by looking through the reviews that have a status of “Completed” that fall within the month being calculated.

Viewing past payments that have been received is a much simpler task. Click on the “View Payments” link within the same tab will provide an easy-to-use search mechanism for finding payments falling within a specified date range.

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